Bremen Germany

I saw several of these charts posted on blogs and Facebook, which come from an original post by J. Paul Hawthorne. So I decided to follow suit and have created birthplace charts for both myself and my husband.

I went to seven generations (including myself and my husband). It was really interesting to me to look at the data in this way because it really confirmed for me some key things…

My family has been in the United States for many generations, pretty consistently across the various branches of the family.

My husband’s family has much more recent immigrant roots on his mother’s side of the family.

I have more research to do to find the roots of my mother’s family.

I have more research to do on my husband’s father’s side of the family – there are a lot of missing information about that branch of the family.

My father’s family is pretty much Irish and German immigrants to the New York area (mostly Brooklyn). Very strong roots in that region.

My mother’s family is primarily from Georgia and Mississippi, with a little migration from Virginia and South Carolina.

My husband’s mother’s family were all Polish immigrants (even though the birthplaces are variously Poland, Prussia and Germany). I find it an intriguing example of how much the history of Poland has been dictated by the political history of Europe as a whole.

My husband’s father’s family moved around a lot and their roots are largely unknown… They were primarily in the midwest (Missouri/Oklahoma), but it looks like if we go back a little farther, there may be more roots in the area of Illinois/Ohio/Pennsylvania. They were definitely the more migratory of all the branches of our families.